My Method for Followers - Workable Long Term?

I'm not in this for money, just fun. 3 followers or 30K I guess it really doesn't matter . . . BUT . . . when I do something I like to do it well & do it big.

Just looking for feedback. I've read through countless pages here, but haven't really seen a clear consensus.

Photography niche. I've grown to over 3000 followers in about a month (account is 4 years old, but I only posted odds & ends up up until a month ago. Nothing serious).

So far I have done things by hand & with a bot.

Liking about 1000 photos / day
Commenting on about 100
Following about 500 users

I haven't been doing a lot of unfollowing yet. Mainly the few I see show up in my feed that I obviously don't care to follow (memes, etc.) - and then I also unfollow all of the oldest non-followers that show up in Crowdfire every morning. Only doing this once a day & up to the limit that Crowdfire allows (50-60?).

From what I've read, the best method is to follow up to 7500, quit following for a few days & then unfollow back down to a lower number.

Can I expect the bottom to fall out when I start mass unfollowing?

So that's what I've been doing so far.

Shoutouts. Tried it once & it seemed like a waste of money. I found someone in my niche with about 35K followers. Price was affordable for a 24 hour shoutout. I couldn't notice any appreciable increase in my followers / likes / etc.

I realize content is key to all of this, but I'm averaging over 500 likes per photo & around 30 comments. I feel I have pretty good engagement from my followers - so what possibly kept people from jumping over to my page & following me?

Are there any things I should do to my page before doing a shoutout campaign?

Mentions. Please explain the value of these. I just don't get it.

Additional accounts. I'm an old pro at sock puppets & I assume the same principle applies to instagram for those of you with multiple accounts. Self promotion. Do you buy an established account(s) to grow your main one? Do you start from scratch? Scrape other photos & post them? What's the best strategy here?

Like I said, I guess it really doesn't matter how many followers I have - but I've gotten hooked & it's fun. If I'm going to do this, I want to see just how large I can get.

curious to see what others say, ive been trying similar on my own with a limited number of photos because i take them all myself. havent been able to break into the high numbers at all. not breaking 50 likes per photo, barely at 2k follows after about 3 months of casual posting + year old account, but i've done lots of following for the amount of time ive had. have also tried very very low settings with MP but dont feel like it nets any of the right accounts or numbers.

feels like a neverending quest but i'd really like to hit at least 15k of real followers within the next 6 months... doubt it'll happen even though some in my niche have plenty more!

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